Computers and Information Systems: Year In Review 2009

Despite the worldwide recession, e-books, smartphones, and netbooks were hot consumer devices, while Twitter was the cool Web application, and cloud computing gained support in the corporate world. Apple CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company after surgery, and Microsoft introduced Windows 7 to replace the much-criticized Vista.

Computers and Information Systems , The global economic recession made 2009 a difficult year for technology workers and companies. In the first quarter alone, American high-technology firms laid off more than 84,200 workers, according to job-tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That was up from the 66,300 laid off in the fourth quarter of 2008. In Japan financially troubled computer-chip manufacturer Toshiba announced plans to lay off 3,900 contract workers over the next year, in addition to the 4,500 temporary workers it had already cut from its workforce.

As the year ended, computer companies hoped that they were seeing the signs of an economic upturn, spurred in part by Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system (OS), which, it was envisioned, would generate a new round of computer-upgrade purchases. Optimism was based on better-than-expected quarterly earnings reports from several companies, including Google, IBM, and Intel. It was too early to tell whether an uptick in technology purchasing in the U.S., driven largely by consumer electronics, would spread to the corporate market.

Electronic gadgets of all sorts continued to become part of the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. A study of American and Canadian consumers by Forrester Research showed that half of all adults played computer games, just under two-thirds of households had a broadband, or high-speed, Internet connection, three-fourths of households had a cellular telephone, and 8% of the consumers surveyed had a smartphone (essentially a handheld computer integrated with a cell phone). In the U.S., 44% of households owned a laptop personal computer (PC), and the average family owned two PCs. High-definition (HD) television and home computer networks were among the gadgets most rapidly gaining favour with consumers.

Wireless phone companies continued to invest heavily in smartphones and netbooks (downsized laptops equipped with cellular-network Internet connections) as new ways to sell more data services—which was necessary if they were to offset declining prices for cellular voice service. One cellular company tried to borrow an audio technique from consumer electronics to make voice calls more appealing. France Telecom offered HD cellular audio, which brought to cell phones the digital sound reproduction used with digital TV, music compact discs, and FM radio stations.

E-books

Electronic books, or e-books, caught the eye of publishers as never before in 2009 because of Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader, stand-alone devices designed to read the e-books that were sold online by Amazon and Sony, respectively. Google also said that it would begin offering e-book downloads, although it was unclear which equipment it would use. Other e-book providers included iRex, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, and cell phone company China Mobile. Bookstore operator Barnes & Noble inaugurated an e-bookstore on its Web site and offered e-books that could be read on several devices, including PCs, Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones, and Barnes & Noble’s own newly introduced e-book reader called nook.

Some printed book publishers were compelled to take e-books seriously because e-book sales were growing, while sales of printed books were not. Adding to the appeal of e-books was that they were about as profitable to sell as printed books, even though e-books typically sold for less (about $10 versus an average of $26 for a hardcover book). That was because publishers could do away with physical book expenses such as printing, storage, and transportation. E-books also offered multimedia options that printed editions could not, and text could be combined with occasional video snippets and links to Web sites. Book publisher Simon & Schuster released the first four e-books, which it called vooks, that included video; these could be read and watched online or on Apple’s iPhone or iPod Touch devices.

It was unclear how many consumers would shift from printed books to e-books; in 2009 the latter accounted for only a few percent of unit book sales. Still, some in the book industry worried about piracy of electronic books via downloads of illegal book copies—similar to what had already happened to the music industry. Such illegal book sharing already existed on a small scale. In addition, book publishers worried that letting libraries offer e-books would make consumers less inclined to buy print versions, because downloading e-books made library use easier. As a result, some book publishers refused to allow their e-books to be offered through libraries.

The Kindle produced the first consumer privacy issue associated with e-books when in July Amazon, realizing that it lacked the rights to sell George Orwell’s novels 1984 and Animal Farm online, refunded the 99-cent purchase price to customers and remotely deleted copies of the books already downloaded to nearly 2,000 Kindle customers. Amazon was slammed with a barrage of criticism, made more intense because 1984 details how powerful rulers can dominate peoples’ lives. A Michigan high-school student whose copy of 1984 was deleted sued Amazon, and in September the case was settled out of court. Amazon agreed to pay $150,000 (to be donated to charity) and apologized for deleting the books. As part of the settlement, the company also pledged not to delete e-books from U.S. customers’ Kindle units in the future unless the user agreed, the user wanted a refund or failed to make the electronic payment, a court ordered a book deleted, or removing a book was necessary to eliminate malicious software.

The Kindle case illuminated the difficulties of determining ownership in the digital age. Under the Kindle license agreement, e-books purchased by users were licensed, not owned, and the license also allowed Amazon to alter the e-book service. Attorneys indicated that it was unclear whether the license agreement allowed Amazon to delete e-book content that consumers had bought and downloaded to a Kindle.

Smartphones

Apple’s iPhone continued to dominate the market for smartphones. The company introduced the iPhone 3GS (which added voice controls, a digital compass, and the ability to record video to the third-generation wireless-network platform) for $199–$299 and, in an effort to broaden iPhone use even further, dropped the price of the previous model, the iPhone 3G, to $99. Apple’s iPod remained the top-selling digital music player, although Microsoft continued to compete with its Zune music player, to which it added the capabilities of playing HD video and receiving HD radio signals with better-quality sound than traditional FM radio.

Cell phone companies AT&T and T-Mobile sought to differentiate their data-using smartphone services by offering customers free Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) connections when they could not get a cellular network connection. AT&T had faced the bigger problem because its iPhone customers used more data than owners of other smartphones and thus tended to take up more network capacity per user. AT&T also offered the most free Wi-Fi hot spots, about 20,000.

Apple reported that it had sold its two billionth unit of iPhone and iPod Touch application software, or app, from its iTunes online store. Users could choose from among 100,000 apps in 20 categories, including games, business, and social networking. Hundreds of independent firms wrote apps for the iPhone and iTouch, but Apple had to approve the programs before they could be sold online through the App Store portion of iTunes.

For the first time, Apple allowed two of its music competitors, on-demand streaming music services Rhapsody and Spotify, to provide an app that connected iPhone and iPod Touch customers to their services. Apple attracted an inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) when it rejected an app for Google Voice, which provided access to cellular-calling, text-messaging, and voice-mail services that competed with those of AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive service provider in the U.S. Apple told the FCC that it was still considering whether to offer the Google Voice app.

A new type of app called “augmented reality” was available for the iPhone and phones using Google’s Android OS. This app used the GPS (global positioning system satellite navigation) location chip in the phone to overlay the phone’s camera view of a street scene with local tidbits of information, such as the identity of stores, points of interest, or real-estate listings. The reliability of augmented reality was limited by the accuracy of the GPS units that the phones contained, but research firm iSuppli concluded that the GPS capabilities of smartphones were opening up a new area of growth for the devices, particularly the iPhone. One use of GPS was to enable the iPhone to compete with stand-alone GPS navigation systems, but there were still technical hurdles in placing complex navigation software on cell phones.

Apple won in another controversy over whether Palm Inc.’s Palm Pre smartphone should be allowed to connect to Apple’s iTunes software, in competition with the iPhone and the iPod. When Apple blocked the connection, Palm complained to an industry oversight group for USB-port connection standards that Apple’s action was improper restraint of trade. The USB Implementers Forum dismissed Palm’s claim, however, and said that Palm was in the wrong for making its device appear to be an Apple device.

Computer Games

Sales of video games and the game consoles that played them suffered from poor economic conditions, even though the sector had been expected to be recession-proof—on the theory that the games represented stay-at-home escapist entertainment. Experts attributed the sales decline to both tight consumer budgets—new console games cost about $60 each—and a lack of new must-have games. As a result, Nintendo dropped the price of its Wii game console by $50, to $199, Sony reduced the price of its most-expensive PlayStation 3 model by $100, to $399, and Microsoft cut the price of its most-expensive Xbox 360 model by $100, to $299.

In an effort to boost the industry’s sales, game companies emphasized new titles with familiar names, such as the space-war game Halo 3: ODST and The Beatles: Rock Band, in which the music and images of the legendary 1960s band were paired with a play-along game. The gaming industry also began to embrace a new trend, playing casual games on cell phones. The iPhone’s App Store had made hundreds of low-cost or free games available to consumers for downloading, and there were concerns that cell-phone games could take attention away from more- expensive games for other portable gaming devices.

A new interactive computer game, entitled The Beatles: Rock Band, was released …

MTV Games—Harmonix/Reuters/Landov

Social Networking

A study by Forrester Research showed that half of American adults who spent time online used social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn, a 46% rise from the year before. Most of the increased use was among adults aged 35 and older. Another survey, by Common Sense Media, a group that monitored children’s issues, demonstrated that while teenagers were big users of social networks, most parents did not understand the extent to which the teens used the networks. The survey showed that 22% of teens checked their social networks more than 10 times daily, but only 4% of parents believed that their children were so heavily involved.

Much of the attention in 2009 was focused on Twitter, a social-networking service that allowed people to exchange short (140-character) messages, or “tweets,” on any topic via computer or cell phone. (SeeSidebar.) On the basis of its popularity, Twitter was able to raise $100 million in new funding, even though it was a start-up with little or no revenue. Twitter’s founders—entrepreneur Evan Williams, social-networking expert “Biz” Stone, and software engineer Jack Dorsey—sought to expand the reach of the service that they had launched in 2006 without a formal business plan.

Overall, text messaging—sending short written messages via bursts of data from one cell phone to another—grew in popularity, but the activity became controversial when more people began driving and texting at the same time. Polls in the U.S. found that more than 90% of adults favoured a ban on text messaging while driving. Research into so-called distracted driving found that drivers using cell phones were four times as likely to have a crash as other drivers. U.S. government employees were banned from sending text messages while driving government vehicles. The state of Utah enacted the harshest penalties in the U.S., treating texting as reckless driving. In addition, the Utah law punished texting drivers that caused fatal accidents in the same way that it would punish drunk drivers.

Another problem of cell-phone texting was the transmission of sexual images or messages, which became known as “sexting,” between teenagers. In the U.S. the problem posed new issues for schools and courts. The Iowa state Supreme Court upheld a misdemeanor conviction of an 18-year-old boy who had sent a nude photo of himself to a 14-year-old classmate via text messaging. In Houston, public schools banned sexting. While the extent of the problem was hard to gauge, a survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy showed that 20% of young Americans between the ages of 13 and 19 had either texted or posted online partially or completely nude pictures or video of themselves.

New Developments

Microsoft, admitting that users had been disappointed with the Windows Vista OS (introduced in early 2007), launched the next-generation Windows 7 in October 2009. Windows 7 was said to address complaints about Vista—slowness, software crashes, and software incompatibility issues—while keeping the underlying Vista architecture. Windows 7 improvements included more efficient use of memory, which caused a PC to start up faster and run more smoothly. When Vista was announced, its high computing demands meant that it would not run well on many existing computers. That was expected to be less of a problem with Windows 7, which was said to work on nearly all new computers as well as those that were up to three years old. Satisfactory performance on older PCs was said to vary, although Microsoft’s official system requirements were set fairly low.

In December Microsoft reached an agreement on Windows antitrust issues with the European Union. The EU reacted favourably to Microsoft’s offer to alter the way that it combined its Internet Explorer Web browser with Windows. Users would be given a choice of browsers when setting up the operating system; Internet Explorer could be turned off and another browser downloaded.

Microsoft also won a patent victory when a federal judge in Providence, R.I., overturned a $388 million penalty against the company, one of the largest amounts ever awarded in a civil patent-infringement lawsuit. Software firm Uniloc USA, Inc., had won damages from Microsoft in an earlier jury trial on the basis of claims that Microsoft had infringed on Uniloc’s security software patents.

Another patent-infringement suit involved Microsoft7. A federal court in Texas in May ruled in favour of the Canadian firm i4i, Inc., which claimed in a lawsuit filed in 2007 that Microsoft’s Word software infringed on an i4i patent. (The technology involved XML, or extensible markup language, which was used in electronically encoding documents.) In August the court ruled that Microsoft should pay more than $290 million in damages and issued an injuction that would prohibit the company from selling versions of the Word program that contained the patented technology. Microsoft obtained a temporary stay of the court’s order and in September told a federal appeals court that the lower court had erred in interpreting i4i’s patent claim, but i4i told the appeals court that Microsoft had known about i4i’s patent before using the technology and had simply disregarded it. Microsoft lost its appeal and agreed to replace the infinging code in Word 2003 and Word 2007. The court ruling might force the software company to make technical changes to the next version of Word, planned for release in 2010.

Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, won favourable reviews, but according to Irish Web-traffic-statistics firm Statcounter, Microsoft’s share of the American Web-search market remained under 10% and dwindled slightly in the months after Bing was launched, which left it in third place behind Google and Yahoo! Google’s U.S. market share grew slightly during the same period, to 80%. Worldwide, Google held about 90% of the search market.

Microsoft and Yahoo! formed a 10-year partnership to combat Google, but it was unclear how successful the companies were likely to be, given the market leader’s dominant position. Under the agreement, Microsoft was to provide Bing’s search technology on Yahoo!’s Web sites. The goal was to increase the number of people using the Yahoo! search service in order to boost revenue from the advertising that accompanied the search results. The agreement came about after Microsoft failed in its hostile bid to acquire Yahoo! in 2008 for $47.5 billion (about $33 per share). Microsoft eventually withdrew its offer, and Yahoo! replaced its CEO, cofounder Jerry Yang, who had reportedly opposed the acquisition unless Microsoft increased its bid to $37 a share.

There were more delays in Google’s settlement with authors and publishers in a 2005 copyright-infringement case over scanned library books that were to appear online. Google’s original settlement called for Google to pay $125 million to compensate authors and publishers of books that were still protected by copyright and to help locate the copyright holders for out-of-print books covered by the law. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) raised legal and antitrust objections to the agreement on the basis of complaints that it gave Google too much power over copyrighted works. Amazon complained that the settlement would give Google a monopoly over “orphan works,” copyrighted books whose owners could not be found, and would allow authors and publishers to set e-book prices—an extension of their influence in what was a key new business area for Amazon. There were also allegations that the agreement violated French law. The two sides in the copyright case—the defendant, Google, and the plaintiffs, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers—negotiated a replacement agreement, which was awaiting court approval at year’s end.

In a related matter, Google acquired reCAPTCHA, a company that created visual puzzles to ensure that people and not automated bots (short for robots) were signing up for Internet services. Google sought to adapt the technology to improve optical character recognition (OCR) for out-of-copyright books that it scanned and offered for downloading. Some of the one million books that were already available contained errors that were traceable to flaws in OCR.

Personal Computers

The PC industry waited for signals that the recession was over, but the outlook was not good in the first part of the year. Research firm IDC said that worldwide PC shipments were down 2.4% in the second quarter from a year earlier, and the value of PC shipments dropped about 19%, in part because of price discounting. It was hoped that the year-end holiday season would signal the return of better economic times—and there were early indications that could be true. In the third calendar quarter of the year, all PC companies (with the exception of Dell) reported rising sales. Late in the year, according to IDC, PC maker Acer replaced Dell as the second-ranked PC market-share holder, with 14% of the worldwide market. Hewlett-Packard remained number one, with just over 20% of the world PC market. Apple boosted its U.S. market share with record nonholiday sales in the third quarter, but the Macintosh remained a minor player internationally.

Netbooks were the fastest-growing PC category and were seen as bridging the gap between smartphones and laptop computers. Netbooks were small notebook computers with slower processors, smaller screens, shrunken keyboards, and lower-capacity disk drives that nonetheless could handle Internet browsing and routine computing tasks. They were aimed in part at users who were comfortable with using online applications for common productivity tasks, such as document or spreadsheet creation. There was concern in the computer industry, however, that netbooks simply represented a new, less-expensive product category and that their sales would cut into sales of traditional laptop PCs.

Computer manufacturers experimented with a PC even smaller than a netbook but larger than a smartphone—called a “mobile Internet device” or “smartbook.” Designed to fit in a pocket or purse, it was intended for e-mail or Web browsing via cellular network or Wi-Fi Internet connection.

Google, which already made the Android OS used on some cell phones, declared that it would compete with Microsoft and Apple in the market for PC operating systems. Google planned to challenge the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, using an extension of its Chrome Web browser technology in a product that it expected to introduce in late 2010. As a result, Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned in August from Apple’s board of directors. Apple said that potential conflicts of interest made it difficult for Schmidt to remain on Apple’s board.